1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to motor vehicle accessories and fuel systems.
2. Background Information
Diesel engine vehicles are more prone to disablement from fuel filter stoppage than gasoline vehicles. This is true, in part, because diesel fuel is less “pure” than more gasoline, and impurities will often accumulate and clog a fuel filter.
Presently, a clogged fuel filter will disable a vehicle until or unless the filter is removed and replaced. This is certainly an inconvenience, but is more than that. Under certain circumstances, safety become far more a prominent issue than convenience, when, for example, a fuel filter reaches a level of occlusion during use that the engine loses most or all of this power, and this occurs on a busy highway or freeway. Clearly, if this occurs with a tractor trailer under such circumstances, the safety issues because of the traffic entanglements are numerous.
There is virtually nothing in the practical realm that anyone can do to prevent fuel filters from clogging. In so doing, fuel filters are, in essence, simply doing what they are designed to do—catch contaminants before they reach fuel injectors, which are much more expensive to service or replace.
Even if one were to change fuel filters periodically in anticipation of clogging and in view of a more or less “normal” rate of occlusion, variations in fuel contamination would inevitably fail, from time to time, to “catch” a fuel filter in time to prevent all power losses.
What is needed, therefore, is a device or system which accommodates the inevitability of fuel filter stoppage by providing immediate alternative fuel pathways once a stoppage is noted. It is an object of the present invention to obviate the inconvenience and safety hazards which attend diesel fuel filter stoppage, and in so doing provide just such a device or system.